transit

The Rapids' ridership is showing steady "recovery"; it is deemed "recovery" as, post-COVID, everything must now be bench-marked against 2019, the last year of the before times. By the raw numbers the Rapid closed October at ~65% of 2019 ridership. That is 703,844 rides, deemed UPT or Unpaired Trips by the Federal Transportation Administration (FTA), in October 2024 compared to 1,088,772 in 2019. So far (Jan - Oct) ridership in 2024 is ~63% of comparative 2019 ridership.

There is a lot, very quietly, happening in the transportation space. On the surface not much is changing, other than related to ride-hailing / car-sharing, which I will cover first. Meanwhile, down below in the civic forges the bellows are pumping; we are either shaping the beginnings of a different future, or at least witnessing the death gasps of the status-quo. If voters choose wisely next month the stage is set for change; but we’ve been here before, don’t count those chickens just yet.

This is a list of local breweries and their accessibility via transit. A brewery is considered on a route if it is within 0.25 miles of a stop. Route 90 is the Silverline and route 45 is the LakerLine

UPDATE 2024-10-03: Hours of operation have been updated, and the Sunday operating hours added.

It has been a long time in the making, riders have been able to feel it coming, and now it's here: the service cuts. DASH service since the launch of the DASH v3.0 routes in May (2023) has not operated Monday or Tuesday, the other days of the week it has been unreliable (not 15 minute headways). Ghost buses have begun appearing across the network, a phenomenon rarely experienced in previous years.

The 👉2023-05 meeting of the Rapid Planning meeting contained the "Rousing Debate".👈. Truly riveting reading for those of us who are the type of people who read meeting minutes. 🙂 Fortunatley for us, this conversation continued at 👉the 2023-09 Planning meeting (PDF, minutes)👈

The text from the meeting minutes has been edited slightly for readability.

A little known local transit detail is that the Rapid operates a set of route extensions during the GRPS school year. This includes routes #1 (Division/Madison), #4 (Eastern), #7 (West Leonard), #10 (Clyde Park), and #12 (West Fulton). These route extensions operate on weekdays in the ~7am and ~2pm hours.

The concept of the Senate, at least as implemented by the United States Constitution, is anti-democratic. In the state of Montana each senator represents ~500,000 people, in Michigan ~5,000,000 people, and in California ~19,500,000 people. A citizen of Montana has 39 times the representation of a citizen of California, and 10 times the representation of a citizen of Michigan.